Håkan Nesser (born February 21, 1950) is one of Sweden’s most successful authors, and has written a number of successful novels, mostly crime fiction. He has won Best Swedish Crime Novel Award three times – which is quite remarkable – and his novel Carambole won the Glass Key award in 2000. His books have been translated from Swedish into 9 languages. Hakan Nesser has published 20 books in Swedish. Five of them have so far been translated to English. They are Borkmann’s Point (2006), The Return (2007), The Mind’s Eye (2008), Woman with Birthmark (2009), and The Inspector and Silence (2010). All of these are books in the series about Van Veeteren. The series about Van Veeteren consists of 10 books (in Swedish), just like Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s famous series about Martin Beck did. With his 2006 crime novel Människa utan hund (Human without Dog) Nesser introduced a new main character, Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti, a Swedish police inspector of Italian descent. He has remained the main ”hero” in Nesser’s crime books since then. Inspector Van Veeteren Series 1. Borkmann's Point (2006) 2. The Return (2007) 3. The Mind's Eye (2008) 4. Woman with Birthmark (2009) 5. The Inspector and Silence (2010) Người post Vui lòng đăng nhập hoặc đăng ký để xem link Nguồn TVE
01. Borkmann's Point (2006) International bestseller Nesser makes his U.S. debut with this classy and rewarding whodunit, which won the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize for Best Novel in 1994. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, a veteran of 30 years of police work who appreciates fine food and drink, reluctantly cuts short his vacation to help the police chief of the remote town of Kaalbringen and his small crew investigate two ax murders. When the killer claims a third victim and the town’s best police investigator disappears without a trace, Van Veeteren, who has left only one case unsolved in his long career, intensifies his hunt. The contemplative inspector believes that in every case a point is reached where enough information has been gathered to solve the crime with “nothing more than some decent thinking.” The trick is knowing when that point is reached. Thompson’s smooth translation makes this worthy mystery readily accessible to American readers.
02. The Return (2007) Nesser’s latest contemporary police procedural, set in his Swedish homeland, is an excellent puzzler that will remind many of the Inspector Morse series. Nesser’s sleuth, Detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, is on the eve of major surgery when a baffling murder case is dumped on his team; a mutilated corpse has been found in a ditch, and is eventually identified as that of Leopold Verhaven, a recently released double murderer. Van Veeteren and his squad deftly delve through decades of faded eyewitness recollections before reaching a satisfying solution, albeit one that requires the inspector to cross a line to achieve justice.
03. The Mind's Eye (2008) Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution. But Van Veeteren’s suspicions about the identity of the killer are borne out when Mitter also becomes a murder victim. Now the chief inspector launches a full-scale investigation of the two slayings. But it may only be the unspoken secrets of the dead–revealed in a mysterious letter that Mitter wrote shortly before his death–that will finally allow Van Veeteren to unmask the killer and expose the shocking root of this sordid violence.
04. Woman with Birthmark (2009) A mother’s dying wish sealed with a deadly promise. Four men with a secret they thought they’d buried decades ago. A detective in love. A man desperate to live despite the shadow of his guilty past. After hearing her mother’s deathbed confession and following the dreary funeral, Maria Adler realizes she has no other option but to seize upon her mother’s imperative to do something. Dissolving the life she loathes, Maria changes her appearance and disappears. When she emerges, revenge is her sole occupation. Inspector Van Veeteren and his associates are left bewildered by the curious murder of a man shot twice in the heart and twice below the belt. He was a quiet, utterly dull man, and the only suspicious activity his surviving wife can recall is a series of peculiar phone calls. Repeatedly the telephone would ring, offering nothing but the words of an obscure pop song from the 1960s. This siren song is linked to an identical murder, but the true link between these heinous crimes remains unknown, while a daughter’s pride grows with the satisfaction of vengeance and another detective’s lover offers telling insights that only an outsider could deduce. With the critical eye and cool observation necessary for a successful chess match, Van Veeteren pursues his subject across the country, wading through outrageous leads and fruitless tips. A breathless thriller full of deception, blackmail, and cold murder, Woman with Birthmark is a chilling read.
